Toy trains bring Hoover an enjoyable ride

Minter's Train Shop has been an important Lubbock fixture to Jerry Hoover for most of his life. He remembers how much he loved to go there when he was in elementary school, and now, at the age of 63, Hoover is the owner of the train shop.

"I would go to Minter's at every opportunity when I was a boy and watch the trains. Mr. Minter was always very patient with me. I'm sure he had better things to do, but he would run the trains for me," Hoover recalled.

It isn't hard to guess what part of being an electric train dealer is most enjoyable to him today.

"My favorite part of it is when the kids come in and look at the trains," he said.

Minter's Train Shop opened in 1951 at 2135 19th St. by Marlin P.J. Minter, an instructor in Texas Tech's electrical engineering department.

In addition to selling electric trains, the business also was a small-appliance repair shop.

Today the business is in a strip shopping center at 50th Street and Quaker Avenue. Hoover bought the train shop part of the business in 1991, and his partner, Roger Williams, owns the repair shop part of the business.

Hoover, who is a certified public accountant, spends Saturdays working at the shop, and Williams runs the train shop for him during the week when Hoover is busy with accounting work.

Although Hoover has been fascinated by trains as long as he can remember and has always loved watching them, he said he never had one as a child.

He was bitten by the train collecting bug in 1979 when he was 31.

"I decided I needed to buy an electric train for my son - who was just a baby. I bought it even though it would be years before he would be able to run it," he said.

Hoover found the Lionel train set, which was about 25 to 30 years old at the time, by answering a classified advertisement in The Avalanche-Journal, he said.

"When I went to look at the train, it was a gorgeous, perfect-condition train set. I paid the price they were asking, went home, took it out of the boxes, and I was hooked," he said.

Soon Hoover was running A-J classified ads of his own, seeking to buy old train sets. He estimates he bought about 50 train sets through those advertisements.

He was seeking Lionel trains at first but later became interested in electric trains from the American Flyer and Marx toy companies, he said.

But Lionel was his favorite and is by far the pre-eminent American manufacturer of trains.

"In its heyday, Lionel was the largest toymaker in the world," Hoover said.

The company introduced new models of train sets every year and had a variety of box cars, tank cars, gondolas, flat cars for purchase separately so kids could customize their trains.

"Little boys would almost die of anxiousness every year waiting for the new Lionel catalogue to come out. When it arrived, they would wear out the catalogues looking through them over and over," Hoover said.

When he became a serious train collector, Hoover began making regular visits to Minter's Train Shop again. The business moved to the 50th Street location in 1988, after Minter had sold it, and Hoover bought the train shop part of the business in 1991.

Although many people think of electric trains as being a toy for boys, they have always been popular with girls, he said. Lionel recognized the female market and created the Lady Lionel train for girls with pastel-colored cars in the 1950s. The train was a colossal flop, and sets are very rare today because so few of them were sold, he said.

"The girls didn't want pink, blue and yellow cars. They wanted them to be just like boy trains," said Hoover, who added female interest in trains continues today.

"A lot of my customers are girls and women," he said. "Not 50 percent of them, but you would be surprised."

He said he had just sold a Polar Express train set, modeled after the train in the popular Christmas book and movie, to a girl who came in the store with her grandparents and picked it out.

Lionel markets trains with brand names such as Coca-Cola, movies and a variety of other special interests. In addition to the Polar Express train, Harry Potter fans can buy the Hogwarts Express.

There is a Wizard of Oz train, a Lone Ranger Wild West set, a Halloween train called The Transylvania Express - with mummy and vampire figures - and train sets and cars labeled with NASCAR, Boy Scouts and many other interests.

For decades, electric trains were the most desired Christmas gift for boys - and quite a few girls - and Hoover said the electric train business is still strongly attached to Christmas.

"I do about half my business at Christmas," he said. "It's still going strong."

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